Abhishek Banerjee opens up about his casting in Stree and Paatal Lok

If we were to say two of the most loved and successful pieces of Hindi entertainment in recent years, Stree and Paatal Lok have one thing in common, one would probably start scratching their head. These two are starkly different from each other: the story, the narration, the makers, the genre, and even the locations. But one thing that was common was actor Abhishek Banerjee. 

Being a casting director himself, who even ran his own casting company, when Abhishek sat with mid-day’s podcast series The Bombay Film Story, we asked him if he would cast himself in the two distinctive characters. 

Abhishek Banerjee was rejected for Jana

Abhishek’s portrayal of Jana is unmatched. It`s difficult to imagine anyone else in the character other than the versatile actor. Interestingly, that`s what he himself thought as well when auditioning for the role. But strangely, the selectors thought otherwise. Sharing an interesting backstory, Abhishek told us, “I would have cast myself as Jana for sure. When I gave the audition, I got rejected. There was another guy who was supposed to do it.” 

“They were casting for it, and I was interested in Bittu. I gave the audition for Jana and I got rejected. But I knew it that there`s no one who can do Jana better than me. Somehow, I knew it. And I kept telling Amar bhai (Amar Kaushik). I kept telling him that, ‘No one can do this.’ I had that much confidence.” 

Abhishek Banerjee reveals he would never see himself as Hathoda Tyagi

He adds he would have never cast himself as the ruthless killer in Paatal Lok. He says, “I would have never cast myself as Hathoda Tyagi. I didn`t see that in me.” 

Then how did he land in that role? Interestingly, Abhishek shares he was actually worried after Street happened since he was being offered the same “quirky” roles, which were far from his real-life self. He expresses gratitude to Pataal Lok maker Sudeep Sharma for seeing Hathoda Tyagi from Jana, both of which are poles apart. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he says, “Thank God for Paatal Lok, thank God for Sudeep Sharma. I don`t know how he could correlate the two and see Hathoda Tyagi in Jana. He saw Jana and said ‘Kuch toh pagalpan hai and I want you to play Hathoda’.”